You are listening to the Empowered Business podcast. I’m your host, Monica Froese, and if you’re like me, you want to grow a business you love that gives you financial freedom and fits your lifestyle. Every week you’ll get strategy and unfiltered opinions from me and other successful business owners that will inspire you to make big moves in your business. When we work together, we not only grow faster, we also amplify each other’s voices. Are you ready to build your business on your terms? Let’s jump in. Welcome back to another episode of The Empowered Business Podcast. Today I am talking to Sydney Eve Matrix. I met her because she enrolled in a few of my programs and she’s a very active participant in my communities. And honestly, when I started recording this episode, it was with the intent of talking about her template shop. As you know, we’ve been talking a lot about digital product shops, and I thought Sydney Eve is a great person to talk about this because she has recently started and started selling out of her template shop. However, right before we record it, I had a one on one call with her where we walked through her shop, and the one thing that really stood out to me was that this is so much more than beautiful templates because don’t get me wrong, her templates are seriously so beautiful, and if you’re just looking for pretty templates, she can certainly help you with that. But her experience and what she does with those templates goes so much further. And if you are someone in the online space who produces any sort of training course, workshop, anything, basically if you teach anything in the online space, you have to listen to this episode because Sydney Eve has some really great advice for you.
So let me just tell you a little bit about her before we dive in. She works with digital course creators and their visual communication strategies, using graphic design to boost the emotional connection their ideal clients feel. Using her templates, clients go to market with creative confidence, knowing that their course looks gorgeous. She’s also a mom to eight bossy female Yorkies, and in passing she happens to mention which funny because you’ll notice she likes to downplay some of this about herself, but she is so smart and I’m going to highlight it because she’s a business coach. She’s also an instructional designer and trained at Harvard. She’s a full time professor who teaches creativity and entrepreneurship on campus. And those experiences and credentials have helped her design graphics that are attractive and intelligent as well as highly strategic and purpose built to inspire emotional connection and learning. And we’re going to talk a lot about what this emotional connection means, and we’re going to touch on what instructional designer actually is, because it’s not a term that I’ve heard used a lot in this online space. And after talking to her, I realized how important it really is. And she even gave me some tips on how I can improve my programs. So sit back and tune in because I know you’re going to learn a lot from Sydney. Eve. Sydney Eve, Welcome to the Empowered Business podcast. I am so excited you’re here with us today.
Thank you. My pleasure.
Okay, so let’s jump in to your story. I always like to ask everyone when they come on the podcast to tell us about their entrepreneurial journey, how they got started and what they’re doing today.
So my entrepreneurial journey started on campus and I was working in film and media and doing some teaching in music and theater, and I was teaching branding and positioning. And what I found is that a lot of those creative folks needed to have more business training so that they could earn a living. Maybe it was a side hustle, like teaching lessons, teaching piano, etc.. And so then I started to take on more and more of an interest in entrepreneurship in a theoretical way. Then the entrepreneurship bug sort of bit me and I thought, Oh good, I have to walk the talk. So I started with courses first and then I morphed into selling digital products.
Interesting. So when did you start courses?
I would say right at the beginning of COVID or maybe a couple of months in. So what was that, 2019, 20.
Early 20? Yeah.
And so the first thing I had to do in that period was I’m an instructional designer on campus, so we all had to move our courses online, right? All the teachers at every level. And so I was put into service to help other professors quickly pivot. And then after we sort of got all of our digital like socks pulled up, I thought, okay, I’d like to help in this regard off campus. So that’s where I went.
Okay. So can we define a little bit? Instructional designer, Can you. What is that? How did you help professors?
So my job right now is on campus and my 9 to 5. I’m a professor of entrepreneurship now, but I also help subject matter experts like yourself to create courses just right out of your opinionated mind.
Or I do refer to my brain like that guess.
So I’m a curriculum development and design specialist. That’s what I do. So all I need is a subject matter expert like yourself with an idea and where the people that kind of pull that information out of you, organize it and then work to produce your course. You know, whether that’s digital, you know, audio sweetening or lecture writing, slide designing.
You know what’s really interesting and maybe I don’t know why this just hit me right now, I guess I never really considered that what I do for my bigger programs, course wise is actually the equivalent of like what a professor puts together for a college course. And I don’t know if that’s by nature of like when I went to college, I’m going to date myself because it was a while ago and like the topics were, I feel like just more generic and maybe it’s just like my college experience was a little different, but that is really what we do as course creators.
Professors are, by nature, very, very boring. And then when you’re in college, anything is more exciting than the lecture. And so it was an opportunity, right when we went online, it was an opportunity to refresh and innovate how we were teaching courses that maybe hadn’t had to glow up for quite some time. So that was great. And when they went online and we got thinking about all these wonderful things that we can do with technology, then I thought, I’m going to see what other people are doing. So that’s when I went out and found that there’s a whole world out there, people like you, entrepreneurs who have a digital course as one part of their business. And that was my introduction to the world where I found you eventually. And here we are.
Wow, that’s so fascinating. Okay, So did you create your own course?
I did. And I thought that that would be a natural fit. And I think lots of educators think that it’s going to be easier to do this to create digital courses and create digital products than it is. And partly that’s because marketing is its own art and science. But I actually teach marketing on campus, so I really thought this would be easier than it is. So it’s definitely I started doing courses thinking this was a no brainer and found that I was just as passionate about small digital products like templates and slip files or spreadsheets. And so, you know, it’s been a journey, right? I started thinking courses were going to be the be all, end all. And the entrepreneurship evolves right as we go down the path.
Well, I do feel like I’ve said this a few times. So when I created my first technical digital product in 2016, which was the family budget spreadsheet, nobody was saying digital product. That wasn’t a thing, it wasn’t a buzzword. And I didn’t even realize that that was what I was creating. But what was the thing was digital courses. People certainly were talking about courses, and I think that’s where the whole idea that be all end all is a course, but not everything is suited for. Course.
100%. Especially with the I don’t know, I’m going to say evolution, but you could say devolution of our attention spans. You know, sometimes we would rather have things that are smaller and snackable or audio only. And, you know, there’s been a lot of shifts that have happened. So as an instructional designer, I’ve always been pushing for more flexible delivery options for accessibility reasons, multimodal, you know, presentation. Let’s do audio and video just to mix it up because no offense, but if you’re kind of boring, you know, it happens. But and that’s all served me well. But the tools evolve so very quickly online with what’s possible that I think we have to kind of try to keep up with that.
So what’s interesting to me is instructional designer. To me, my brain thinks that you have to be very strategic because you’re essentially when I see a digital course, I think it’s someone’s framework that they are laying down in a strategic, logical fashion so that you can follow it and see the same results or learn about that topic, whatever it is. But you will design these very beautiful templates or segway a little bit. You have a template shop which we’re going to talk about, but your designs are absolutely top notch. Beautiful. So is it fair to say then that these are two different sides of your brain and you ended up finding out your passions in the creative side? Is that what happened?
The secret here for me, I know it would make better marketing sense to not keep such things a secret, but I’m working on them. So. But the secret is that I have always known and, you know, I think we all know that when somebody has a video or they, you know, they show part of a movie or they have gorgeous slides or there’s something that’s visually appealing, it’s easier to learn. It’s easier to stay focused.
Absolutely.
And so and likewise, if we can tell, we can humanize the content in some way. We can tell stories or we can make it more interactive, what we can build a community around it. That kind of human element also makes it easier to learn things, retain them, understand them, and people kind of lean in. So if it looks beautiful and it feels scary, people learn things a little bit easier. They also are more likely to buy. So that’s my passion. My secret passion is using emotion, whether it’s visual things or whether it’s, you know, strategic things that are designed to make people feel a sense of belonging. I design for emotion.
So do you have a graphic design background or is that just all.
I.
Do? Oh, you do. Okay. Because your stuff is beautiful.
Thank you for saying that. Thank you. I think that if we have, you know, whatever our colors are, whatever our style is, whatever the esthetic is, if we feel good, confident about the look and feel of our course, we will we will find it easier to sell it. And, you know, we will also attract people to it, probably people who will enjoy, you know, using our products and want to buy not just that product, but all our products.
I don’t know why it just clicked for me, but it just did as you were talking. So basically, okay, first of all, the name of your template shop is because let’s tell people what.
It’s exo exo.
Templates and the URL as exo exo templates.
Dot shop.
Chat. Okay. So we were talking earlier with a recording that you say gorgeous graphics for course, creators. That’s like your hook right now. I told you that. I think you do so much more than that. And I couldn’t figure out the word for it. I was like, I know you do so much more than that. But I didn’t have the words. So I’m not a graphic designer is why Hayley is a saving grace for me, because she can design beautiful things. I have the brain. Whereas like I know what I want to say, I can logically lay things out. I’m very systematic in how I teach, and so I’ve got that down. But making it pretty is not where I’m going to excel. So it just clicked for me. Your shop is essentially providing someone there. Hayley That’s exactly what you’re doing. So you are helping people create that knowledge in their brain and lay it down and make it beautiful.
That’s right. That’s exactly what I’m doing.
Yeah, well, look at.
That. I have found that subject matter experts like yourself can be notoriously difficult to work with because.
I won’t deny.
Them. But they think so fast and sometimes get so far ahead of their users.
Know what I know? I know. Oh, I’m very well aware that this is a case because we do. You are. So how do you rein us in?
Well, you know, I think as soon as I start talking about empathy, everybody wants to be more empathic. We all know the importance of understanding our ideal customer. We know the magic of voice, of customer copywriting. You know, we’re working so hard because we want to change lives like we really care about people. So as soon as I start talking about let’s design this with based on deep, authentic empathy that does appeal, that appeals to the most abstract superstar subject matter expert. You know, empathy is powerful. And and again, the distance between empathy and designing your course for emotional connection is very, very small jump. It’s very small.
So really, it was kind of like magic for you in some ways, because here you have this instructional design background and you’ve helped all these professors take their stuff, make it digital, especially when the world imploded on us. But you didn’t find doing that like creating your own course, something you loved. It was just you thought you’d like it, but you didn’t end up loving it. But you also are great at design. And so it’s like, Is anyone else even doing this? Like, I honestly can’t think of anyone else who helps.
Yeah, I think so. I mean, but, you know, it’s it’s telling that you said you who has I don’t know how many digital courses workshops, you know masterclasses trainings you said what’s an instructional designer. So right there it’s like they’re probably out there. But if they’re marketing themselves as instructional designers, we’re not finding them. And if we do, we don’t even understand what that means. So I think it’s a case where, you know, they are there’s a lot of migration from the world of education to the world of like online digital, like digital entrepreneurship. But they’re very, very different worlds. And I think that the reason I’m sticking it out is because I’m passionate about entrepreneurship. That’s why I teach it on campus, you know, to people who are in the creative and performing arts, you know, I think it’s an opportunity to make a difference.
Absolutely. And I know I never would have thought to like when I was creating my first course. I have no idea where how I would have even arrived at the way I should have someone. An instructional designer helped me. Like, that’s not a word that was in my vocabulary. Probably until I met you, to be honest with you.
No. And yet we’ve all taken courses where some of them just seem so, so easy to make progress in. They really hook you and you get it. And then you’ve taken other courses with such buyer’s remorse. You know, you’re just like, Wow, I have started this thing so many times and I’m just still lost and. It seems repetitive and, you know, I’m just not feeling really, you know, engaged. And, you know, so I think there’s you know, there’s a few tricks up on instructor designer’s sleeve that we could all use. And the one that I’m going to market with is make people feel and you’ll be halfway there, make people feel so emotional.
Design okay, so now you have this template shop and the templates are basically meant to help course creators create. Emotion, that empathy. Right. So what kind of things are you providing in the template shop for someone like me? I could go buy it and it’s going to help. Up level essentially the because even of course is a customer like I being a funnel girl and a marketer because really you you hit on something earlier about the marketing thing. Really, my business is 80 to 90%. Being a good marketer, I know how to sell. And I just happen to be a very strategic thinker, I think, or like a very streamlined thinker. And I think that’s why I can develop decent courses as well, because I’m very detail oriented, but I’m by no means I never wanted to be a teacher or an instructional designer or anything like that. So what templates are you providing that helps? The customer journey of my programs.
You can buy lots of slides. Slide templates for PowerPoint and Canva. Google whatever we use. And when you open them up, it’s not much better than staring at a blank screen because it’s still really empty or it’s filled with dummy content like Lorem ipsum. Yeah. And so what I’m trying to do is something a little different. I’m trying to design the templates filled with and informed by research. So, you know, I’m a university researcher, 9 to 5, you know, teacher, professor. So I do infuse them with research and so I often will include prompts instead of dummy text. And, you know, I’ll include research, like if you want to do a deep dive, here’s a PDF with bunch of research links that informed this. So I’m kind of secretly baking in a lot of information about curriculum design, different learner types, different buyer types, different ways that people engage emotionally and what that means. So they’re I guess they’re not just pretty. They try to be smart, too.
They are absolutely smart. And, you know, like when we went through your shop, I picked up on that. I did. But you don’t lead with it.
I know. I’m the trouble. I’m in so much trouble. I have to jump off this podcast now and do all the work that you told me I have to do.
Well, the thing is, if on the surface, if I go to your shop, I mean, it’s in the name x o XO templates, right? So templates is in the name. So when I’m going to arrive at your shop, I’m going to immediately think that you’re going to provide me templates like, like we said, so many other there’s there you can find gorgeous templates anywhere. That’s why I said let’s not lead with gorgeous graphics. That is definitely not your value add. Yes, they are gorgeous. It’s funny because you know this with a program, you’ve already said it talking to me, you are well aware that lectures are boring and so we have to spice them up. And so you get that on that side. But then you go to your own template membership and you’re like, Well, I’m going to hide behind the pretty.
It’s so true. And you know, as a professor, you can’t have stage fright, right? You have to be out there. And my courses are tend to be large. You know, they, they go from like 500 to 500 people. And so you’re in front of a lot of people. So I don’t have that kind of visibility problem. But in my side hustle, which is what we’re talking about here, which was born during COVID, I think like many people, we have been living behind our screens a lot, a lot, a lot. And it really has, I think, affected that kind of face to face interaction. But it also I think it’s had a profound effect on people’s sort of self awareness and connection to other people. It’s just been really tough. It’s been hard.
So I completely agree with that. I have talked a lot with friends about the fact that when we went to lockdown, I thought it was going to be the best thing ever because my life was completely hectic with growing the business I knew to get out there with growing the business. I think it was one of the best things I did in the beginning. I just know the inherent value of being in the right room and putting yourself out there. And I did it in corporate and so I did it in the business, but my life was just so chaotic. So when we’re going on lockdown, like finally it’s like the reset button that I felt like I was always racing towards and I was never going to reach and everything shut down so nobody can make me travel anywhere. I’m finally going to get my life like calm. That is not what ended up happening. It was way harder than I thought it was going to be. And I think there’s going to be a research on this for a century about the profound social impacts of what happened by locking us down. Because you’re right, like this is our communication completely changed. And so it’s interesting because, you know, you have to put yourself out there, though, like, you know that and you’re capable of doing it. But it’s like that is that thing in us that’s always like, is what we’re doing good enough?
So true. And you know, for an educator, self marketing is not natural. People don’t sign up for my class because I’m a superstar. Prof. They sign up for my class because they need, you know, creative thinking 301 for their degree requirements. And so self marketing, it’s an interesting challenge. You know, it is. So that’s been a learning curve for me.
Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Like, I’m so glad we did this because now I understand you actually a lot more listening to this, but your stuff is brilliant. And I know because when we back up, I have a Haley, right? Yes. Everyone knows I have a Haley. I talk about her all the time. And people are always like, I want Haley. I’m like, I know everyone needs her. Most people don’t have Haley. And you’re helping those people that don’t have Haley. And so they might not realize when they come to your shop the true gold. That’s they’re like, I picked up on it because I know it because I have it. But the people you’re selling to don’t. And they’re like the gold. Oh, my gosh. Like, seriously, the things that you have on there that could help people.
Thank you. You know, I have a question for you. Etsy helps people in different ways than Shopify does.
Yes.
And I think that people who are colder like, don’t know us will discover us on Etsy in a way that it’s much harder for them to do on Shopify. Shopify has so many pluses that that’s where I exist my shop. I wouldn’t consider Etsy right now, but I guess I’m just thinking when somebody doesn’t know you, is it much, much, much harder on Shopify than it is on Etsy in your opinion? Like what’s the difference?
Okay, so we’re going to start with the major con so everyone knows when I say this that you don’t own anything about your customer data, right? And you know that. But I just want it for all the listeners that the reason I don’t lead with Etsy is actually you’re hitting on so many good points here. So Etsy is an e-commerce platform that has built in traffic and it has user intent because when you go to Etsy, you use it like a search engine. You go there with the intent to search for something. You’re not just like going to the main page and scrolling and hoping something pops out at you that you want to buy. You’re going and you’re searching. And so there’s the user. Anytime someone can arrive at something you’re selling with user intent, they’re already halfway to the buying decision. They put it in the search bar, they add a problem. You’re hoping your listing is going to solve it and it’s built in traffic. But the big downside is that you don’t own anything about that traffic, so it’s not your business. So here’s the thing, though. You know that in order to own the customer relationship, that’s why you have Shopify, right? Because you own everything about the customers that come through. And you’ve also noted that you understand that you have to market yourself. So I’m not against I tell everyone, you can put yourself on Etsy and let the built in traffic if you’re going to make sales over there passively, Sure.
But when you’re out there marketing yourself, like you’re on this podcast and you dropped a link to your shop instead, if you came on here and you dropped a link to Etsy, when people who are listening like we’re talking about like I know I have a ton of course creators listening and now that we’ve established what you do, which is way beyond the beautiful ness of your templates and they want to make their instructional design better and they go seek you out. If we send them to an Etsy link and they buy your thing, that’s great. You made some money from being on this podcast. You’re taking an hour of your time. First of all, you develop the relationship with me to get on the podcast, so you’ve actually put in hours of time leading up to the hour that you’re on this podcast to develop that relationship between us, that relationship marketing. That’s what got you on the podcast. Now you’re here and if you drop a link to your Etsy shop, the people that could have been in your world, you just gave to Etsy and you got one sale from it, that’s it. And that’s why I can’t. And I tell people all the time, I’m like, I’m not against you putting your stuff on Etsy.
Sure, go take advantage of the built in traffic there. But if you’re building a business for yourself, then you’ve got to put yourself out there and you’re marketing yourself like you sponsored a bundle like I did. And if you were driving those people so you paid money to sponsor an event and then you set them to your Etsy store again, that’s great. You got that. It’s really no different than display ads. And my beef with display ads. You spend all this time bringing people to you on your website and they’re there because your website has indicated you’re going to solve that problem. They searched to get to some degree, right? Somehow they found you with an intent that they want to read your blog post and the blog posts provide this value to them, but instead you’re like, Hey, click all this irrelevant stuff that’s popping up and go away from me. I don’t want to own the relationship. Go buy the thing at Target from that display. Like it doesn’t make any sense why you would spend. Honestly, this is my true opinion. You’re going to put something on Etsy. Cool. Let the built in traffic do its job then I guess. But don’t be sitting there wasting your time marketing yourself because you’re never going to own the relationship for the results. Of the marketing interests too.
So with Shopify and all its privileges comes this enormous responsibility, I guess, or opportunity to market yourself and to be clear about what makes you distinct to 100%.
And that’s really in a nutshell the difference between having your own business or having a revenue stream. So like if you said to me that your end goal is to you want to stay in a 9 to 5 and you just want a nice, lucrative side hustle. Goretti Take advantage of their built in traffic. Why not, right? Because your main priority is showing up to your 9 to 5. That’s paying your bills. It’s a nice gravy on top. Like Etsy to me is like a nice icing or gravy. And it’s like another way to take advantage of making money on the Internet. But if you’re saying to me, No, I want to leave my 9 to 5 and I want to do this full time, then you have to own that customer relationship because otherwise every marketing thing you’re doing is being wasted.
I really feel like this was covered in amazing amount of depth. In the digital shop experience, and I wasn’t expecting that. You know, I was really expecting that the your digital shop experience would be pure tactics, but there was a surprising amount of mindset work that we had to do to think differently about our businesses and ourselves and digital products and, you know, shopper journey. There was just so much thinking and unlearning to do that was covered in the digital shop experience.
Well, thank you for saying that. I appreciate that because I do feel like I have been creating courses for a long time and I would never want anyone to see the first course I create it, which has been off the market for years. I didn’t know what I was doing. Oh my gosh. The slide you would be if I compared to your designs. If you saw the slides in my first course before I had a Haley, you’d be like, Hey, what’s really bad? And so I stopped telling that one pretty quick, actually. I mean, I would say that the first significant course I did was the Pinterest ads course, and that launched in 2017. And over the years I’ve come to learn to anticipate what people are going to object. That’s how I for me, that’s how I see it. So like, I kind of go into things knowing where all the objections are going to be. I guess I never see it as mindset work because I’m such a literal person and I’m an anagram and I have learned a lot about myself learning my Enneagram number because I am apparently very intense and I’m there and I’m in your face. And I don’t mean like I have in my gut. I’m not meaning to come off intense when I’m talking. I just apparently do, as my husband has told me many times as well. And so I just approach it like, well, I know they’re going to object about this, so let’s just knock that out of the way so we can actually go do the work. That’s how I see it.
Well, I mean, I think that when you’re trying something new, like setting up your first Shopify store, you have all this stuff to do at the same time, you know, you’re you’re forming your brand and you’re understanding new things about business. You’re learning some technology, you’re spending less time working on your craft. Whatever it is that you’re selling, you’re making new connections. You know, there’s failure point all along, you know, feeling forward all along the way. And so it’s an intense time and there’s so many opportunities for limiting beliefs to stop us and derail us. And that’s what the digital shop experience was for me, other than the tactical and technical support, it was, you know, don’t think you’re special if you find it hard to do X, Y, Z because a lot of people do that. So helpful. So helpful.
Well, okay, so this is essentially then I feel like I picked up on some lessons of instructional design without realizing it, because I think when I went into creating courses, I just wanted to give you the information like, this is what you have to do to this is the X, y, z path to go accomplish the thing that you claim you want to accomplish. And that’s why you bought my course, right? But then through hundreds and hundreds of thousands and thousands of people taught later. And the feedback I just I guess I picked up on the fact that, you know, they have to understand why before you can just be like this is what you’re going to do. Even though the Enneagram eight me just was like, Hello, this is just what you have to do.
You know, people don’t necessarily trust when they buy your first course. They don’t know you. They don’t know like and trust you. And it’s really hard for them to learn if it’s just like, okay, the only way to succeed is to follow this roadmap step by step by lock step. That’s not, you know, curriculum design, curriculum with empathy. And I think that, you know, as that’s part of learning, you know, too, is learning how to be a digital entrepreneur, is learning to sort of let go of some of the precious content and thinking more deeply about who we’re trying to serve. Right. So it’s challenging.
You know, that’s very interesting because I would say if I was just in it for money and didn’t truly care about the transformation, I would just kept doing the literalness, right? Because that’s I mean, I could have sold my courses. Ads was a hot topic, right? You know, I, I pick topics that are sellable topics for sure, but it is not gratifying to me at all for people to feel stuck when I know they can see success, but they’re not yet like I know what I gave them is going to show them if they followed the steps, I know they’ll see success. But it’s not gratifying if they’re not going to see the success because they’re hung up. On overcoming those mindset, and that’s where the empathy comes in. Honestly, what helped me with empathy was kids. That’s for me. I have no problem saying it until I had kids. I feel like there’s a lot of things I did not have empathy about. And then I had a really bad birth experience literally coated on the table. And then I had this baby who totally depended on me for everything, and I was just like, it really started dawning on me that you never know what people are going through. What we see is rarely what’s actually going on. And that’s really when my empathy muscles started to be stretched. And then that’s how the whole business formed. I mean, really, it all formed back in the day with redefining mom, with, you know, relating to other women who I felt like were kind of cast aside from this really traumatic thing that a lot of us go through, but we’re not allowed to express it or say it. And I wanted to give a voice to others that are going through it. And they couldn’t you know, they didn’t know how to find their own voice. I was like, Well, I will help you find your voice, you know? And that’s really what to start it for me. And I can see now that we’ve talked that it has infused and the importance of infusing it into teaching. That’s such a powerful lesson.
You know, as you’re talking, you know, you can hear the teacher like we can all hear the teacher in you and the coach coming out. I think one way is that you really do want people to feel confident. Even if we don’t get it right, it’s okay. And that’s what we are all looking for in teachers, right? For our littles. You know, we want them to lead and help, but make it okay. You know, if if there’s some failures. And at the end of the day, we just want, you know, everybody to feel a little bit more confident, creatively confident, you know, confident with with business, you know, confident with our choices.
Well, I think, you know, and I you’re saying that to my daughter, my oldest. I feel very fortunate. She very smart school. She very little intervention is needed. She does her homework. She gets very good grades and she’s very hard on herself. And I don’t feel I, I don’t put pressure on her. I’ve never had to either, because like I said, she gets good grades and a couple of times she’s got less than perfect. And she is so hard on herself. And I’ve always asked her, what did you try your hardest? Like, did you genuinely do the work and try your hardest? And she says, Yes, mom, but I’m not look, I’m not good enough because I didn’t get the perfect grade. And I’m like, That’s okay. Like, that is absolutely okay. No one’s perfect. And unfortunately, grading is probably terrible because that is what we’re all raised with, right? We’re raised with you fail or you pass the.
Worst part of the job for sure. Absolutely. You know, and I think that basically my job is to teach resilience, to encourage growth mindset. You know, like I said, creative confidence, to just keep saying the same things over and over, you know, failing forward. Do you like that idea? How does that. It feels terrible, doesn’t it? Do you understand why it’s positive, you know, that kind of thing. But like entrepreneurs are a very special breed and they start really young and it sounds like your daughter might be one of those entrepreneurs in the making.
Yeah, I think she is. She reminds me a lot of my I didn’t realize what that was. I couldn’t have articulated the fact that I was born entrepreneur. When we look back, especially my dad, because my dad was the one that said he thought it was nuts to give up my corporate cubicle job, even though he is the most miserable person in his corporate cubicle job to this day. And he told me not to be an accountant because I would hate it and all this stuff. But when I quit corporate, he thought I was out of my mind because that’s all he knew. But then as I got to be successful and he saw, okay, she’s going to make a go with this, then of course, his attitude changed a little bit, but he started telling me things. We start talking about stuff of my childhood, and it was so obvious looking back that I was a born entrepreneur, so obvious, and my daughter reminds me so she’s so creative with the idea. She she wants to monetize everything too. And I think it’s hilarious. I’m like, Oh my. She she talks about sourcing materials with me, like the most random.
I’m like, Who are you? She’s only ten. But like, you know, I love it. I do think she’s a born entrepreneur and I hope she I encourage it for sure. So I have to tell you, I’m really glad we got to do this because your templates are beautiful. Like there’s hands down. I nobody can deny that. But honestly. Your genius is being hidden behind how beautiful they are. And you are so smart, like you are so smart. I feel like there is so much that we can learn that people who create Indian courses too. It is not just like digital course creators because it’s really so much of what we do in our business could benefit from what you’re teaching. I almost want to be like, Oh man, I don’t know. I’m hesitant to say it because I don’t want you to get derailed on this. But maybe in the future, once you’ve really gotten all the marketing pieces down and things are moving, you might want to consider rebranding the name of your shop because it is so much more than templates.
Thanks for that.
I mean, you know, I mean, then all the positive ways to. Of course.
Yes. Are you going to tell us what type of business your daughter will be launching first?
I actually, you know, so about two years ago I got her the CEO kids kit and it kind of just sat collecting dust and she pulled it out. It actually has an actual calculator, which is kind of funny. I don’t even think she realized what a calculator was, to be honest with you, because like, who has just a calculator nowadays? I don’t know. And it’s a digital course, but it has a physical box, which honestly made me think. Talk about instructional design. I’m like, Why don’t I do this for my students? And it’s like, Well, then I got to source it, you know? And then my My Haywire organization side was like, Oh, I don’t even know where I’d start. But she pulled it out. We got it on her iPad, and this girl started writing a business plan, and it went in a direction that I did not expect. There was like photography involved, and she was asking me like, how she can get a professional camera. She hasn’t presented it to me yet, so she’s been working really hard on it. So TBD when she tells me I if I will get her permission, if I can tell people, I honestly don’t know. I don’t know.
Well, she’ll be looking for venture capital soon.
Oh, yeah. She is the biggest negotiator like. So I have a rule with her where I actually really praise my daughters. I have a four year old, so she’s not quite there yet. But I praise women in general who push back on me, like negotiate with me, tell me why I’m wrong. Make your case. Like I know a lot of parents can shut that down. And I’m not judging how other people pay for it, but for me it’s just been super important to allow her to flex her muscle of. I always tell her I might. At the end of the day, still we’re going to uphold what I said originally. But if you can present me with an argument of why I’m wrong and why we should go with your way, I will listen and I let her. I’ve let her do that from a very young age. But now she’s gotten pretty good at it, which is what the point was. Right? So now I tell her, Listen. You can’t use my ways against me. You can use it against everyone else, but not against me. And that’s like the running joke in the house. Like, go use it against your dad. But you can’t do it against me.
You know, a few minutes ago, I was thinking, Oh, I’ll have this little girl in my entrepreneurship class sooner rather than later. And then now I’m thinking, Oh, no, I don’t want her in my class. She’s going to negotiate her way out of all the assignments.
No, that’s one thing I don’t think she would do, actually. Because. Because one of the things I am also big on, it’s hard work. Like at some point, I think me and you have discussed that. I think you actually you said it that it’s a lot harder than you would think. Like harder. It’s a lot harder in. I think I fell definitely in the early messaging in my business victim because I think I was so relieved to get out of corporate that I’m like, this is amazing and you know all of that. But I have since learned that early on, I probably did a disservice to people because it almost came off like it was easy. And it’s not this is hard work. And I’m actually I think I spoiled my daughter a lot in the early years. She was only child for five and a half years, and I definitely did that on the line. I’m going to correct everything my parents told me no about. I’m just going to give her everything. Well, that burned me for a few years, too. And I think that my biggest fear actually is that she’ll think that her success can ride on my coattails, because that’s just not the way the world works.
And so I need her to work hard. I want her to work hard. I don’t want to hinder everything. I will certainly help her where I can, you know, where it makes sense, like if I venture funding. But you better like we talked about cost of goods sold this summer with a lemonade stand. And so she did it with my youngest head in Nanny. So they did it together. And I told her she had to pay me back the materials and I gave her the whole lecture about cost of goods sold. And when she had to come up and hand me back the $7, you would have thought that it was like the worst thing I’ve ever done to her, ever. She could not believe I was making her pay me back. For the materials that went into making her lemonade. She like I was a horrible mom for making her do that. And I was like, This is if you want to run your own business, this is the way it works. You got to pay to play.
That is so funny. My most entrepreneurial students will argue with me about why my assignments are the wrong assignments and they’ve got a better way to do it. And so my most entrepreneurial students will hack the course, which I’m used to now. So I’m but again, I think that happens in digital courses and in memberships. You know, we get those people who just, you know, they are really disruptive, but they show us a new way to think and do things. And so, you know, if you can have enough confidence in your own creation to just kind of sit back and learn from them, you know, it’s it’s such an opportunity.
That is actually I will tell you, you hit on something so important there and I’ve never done it to you, I promise. But there have been people I have had a screenshot and I sent Hayley and Slack and it’s more like I’m no, I’m not doing this. I’m very agitated by it. And you’re right. If I’m agitated by it, there’s probably a shred of truth in there. Something I should be learning from. But instead, I don’t want to deal with it or I don’t. It’s like, Go away. Those are the things you should be paying attention to. You are so right.
It’s hard. It’s really hard, especially when we’re doing all the things, you know? So the first couple of years of entrepreneurship, especially our entrepreneurs, need training and help with resilience, with self care, you know, and sustainable business practices for reason, for good reason. So, you know, we seek out coaching and we seek out feedback. That doesn’t mean that it’s always easy, you know, when we get it.
So I got a particularly kind of rough feedback not that long ago, maybe a month ago, you could tell that she was coming from a good place. Like there are people who are nasty. I’m not going to entertain nastiness like I don’t have time for that in my life at this point. And and the older I get, the more I realize I just don’t need to entertain nastiness. However, she you could tell she was not being nasty. She had some critical feedback. I think it was coming from a good place, though, and I ended up recording a loop back to her, an eight minute loop, and I told her basically I respected everything she was saying, and I repeated back some of her concerns and how like I could make changes and that I appreciated it. And she was floored that I responded with alone. She could not believe it. She was like, I thought you were going to like, cut me out, be like, screw this girl. I’m never dealing with her again. I was like, No, I’m like, Because if we don’t have people who give us critical feedback, how are we ever going to get better? And it’s not like it didn’t sting originally because it did. It was like, really?
But that’s that’s again why having the opportunity to have 1 to 1 feedback surrounding the digital shop experience, for example, like or your membership, having the opportunity to get feedback is really like a double edged sword, right? We really need it. It can be really hard, but we really, really need that feedback. And feedback doesn’t scale. It’s hard to provide feedback and it’s hard to respond to it, but you always know when somebody is not open to feedback, you can just sense it and when they are and people come forward with it, it’s not easy to give feedback, you know, if you can actually act on it, it just indicates that you’re at a certain level of maturity in your business and in your own entrepreneurial identity that you can take that and run with it.
Yeah. One thing I learned, like we did ask for feedback right after the live version of the experience. I definitely know you’ll never please 100% of people. So like there’s a bucket. Like my goal is to please the majority of people, take some critical feedback and then if there’s someone particularly mean, just let it go, you know? So what I learned about myself is having really in a month period, been in such an intense content creation mode. It was exhausting. I mean, I was exhausted at the end of it. Never read feedback in that state of mind because it was not mean. Again, there were some critical feedback, things given. One was particularly long and I was butthurt originally, but that’s because I was burned out. I mean, I came off of it like in the mode I was in. It was like I just put my heart and soul into this thing. I had no room for critical feedback, even though I asked for it. I my physical being had no room for it because I was exhausted and I poured everything I had into it. So. I read it, I was butthurt. I immediately was like, I can’t be reading this right now. I absolutely cannot be reading this. I at least need to take the weekend. It was a Friday, you know, and so I did. I closed it out and I thought about it. I stewed a little bit, but then I started being like, okay, well, I could change this. That’s valid. Let me move that around. And like you had asked me prior to this why we took the live version and then we launched into a self study and it really was informed a lot by the feedback because we do, we had to reorganize some things to make it more user friendly, I guess is the way to say it and to make it make more sense, even though it’s something vehemently in my head made sense. Clearly, if someone is telling me repeatedly something and sent it to them, then I have to not be stubborn and I have to be willing to do the thing.
That, you know, when you think about it, teachers, they teach the whole class. And then at the end of the semester, there’s a review, right? And you get all this feedback and you can’t really use it right away. And you’re also very tired. You know, teachers get tired at terms and every turns into. And so as an instructional designer, I would say to you, how can we build in mechanisms for feedback along the way so that we can actually respond in a more agile way? And that would be like an instructional design challenge, right? So that’s where that’s where an instructional designer can help take a great course or great workshop or mastermind or membership and just maybe help you to achieve more of your goals, your instructional goals or business goals just by shuffling a few things around.
Well, honestly, I when we first started talking, I would have said I don’t I mean, I don’t know why I would hire that originally, but actually it makes a lot of sense because I don’t think I think my course platform has a lot of that stuff that you can build in. And I’ve been thinking since 2016 and even in my head I’m like, This looks cool. I don’t have time. That’s like usually the correlation like, that looks cool. I’d love to do it, but time, bandwidth, it’s always an issue for us.
Exactly. And you get all these technical tools and you don’t even know what’s the point. So it’s not until you’ve identified your own goals, business and instructional goals that you then turn to the technology, right? It’s never the other way around that you let the technology decide how you’re going to teach. Yeah.
Absolutely. Listen, that little golden nugget there was awesome build and feedback as we go. Absolutely. That would actually probably resolve a lot of issues for do to build in feedback as you go.
Well there are no issues in the digital shop experience that was absolutely perfect. Course perfect. Perfect.
Thank you. I appreciate it. It was a labor of love. I will tell you that I did pour a lot.
Oh, you overdelivered like crazy. And we all love you for it. Thank you so.
Much. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, so you do much more than templates. I hope everyone has taken that away from them that you do. You have first of all, you have gorgeous templates and they are absolutely can be used as templates and people can go on their merry way. But what you provide is so much more than that. And so people want to learn the different ways that they can enhance their course by not just your templates but by your instructional design built into them. Where can they find you?
They can find the training and the templates and many easy ways to connect with me just by going to my Shopify store, which wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for Monica and the URL. We’ve already said it’s pretty easy to remember xoxo templates dot Shop. However, Monica just gave me the homework that I might want to rebrand that. So in my spare time I don’t.
Do.
That. No, entrepreneurs don’t have spare time.
Just now to Shopify does make it easy because my shop launches Monica from Popcom. If you go to Monica Pro shop dot com, you’re still going to arrive at empowered Shopko. So believe it or not, rebranding is a lot easier than you’d think. At the end of the day, the domain you don’t have to break any links. You just make the new domain primary in Shopify and you’re going to swap out your logo and you’re done. It’s actually pretty easy.
I’m so glad I came to this conversation. I learned so much. Thank you.
You’re welcome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to you. It’s been very helpful.
My pleasure.
Thanks for tuning in for this awesome episode with Sydney Eve and I highly encourage you to go over to her shop and check out her templates because like I mentioned several times, her templates are so much more than just gorgeous template and I have a feeling that she is going to make that known now that we had this conversation because it is just amazing what she has done and what she can do to help you up level your training. Now, in case you missed it, I am hosting a free week long event starting the week of March 20th called the Digital Shop Accelerator and we’ve coined it. Simplify your sales for more profit. It’s a combination of short impact. Full audio drops and an interactive live training. And you can sign up today over at Digital Shop Experience dot com forward slash training. The link is also going to be in the show notes. But I want to just tell you real quick what we’re going to be covering in this free event, because if you have been thinking about starting your own digital product shop, you really should consider joining us. During this event, we are going to discuss topics like making the mindset shift from free to paid, going from content creator to e-commerce shop owner who provides value through selling because selling a serving. We’re going to talk about the real power of having a centralized call to action in your business. What do I mean by that? You know it having a shop and also the transformation that you will see when you make this shift in your business. I’ll show you how one low price product can easily turn into a multi $100 sale. And then we’ll do a live interactive demonstration on how you can leverage all of your hard work over the years at scale using a digital product shop if you’re in which I hope you are. Head on over to digital shop experience. Com for training and sign up. I can’t wait to see you there. I hope you’ll join us and I hope you enjoyed today’s episode.
